She is the anti-advice columnist, loving all the wrong men for all the wrong reasons and making all the old mistakes. But I think I like her for the same reason I read advice columns so furtively, almost like a nervous addict – it’s not for the advice. Whatever the columnist tells the seekers to do is whatever I would have told them, too – it’s the things that keep me from being an advice seeker myself. No, I love reading about the problems. I don’t know if it’s schadenfreude or voyeurism, or just the same pleasure in dramatic stories that I get from trashy novels or Twilight.

It’s the inverse of the pleasure I get from Jane Austen novels, in which there is one set of characters who find the neat and orderly solution to their problems by acting exactly the way they should, or learning and apologizing when they don’t. Instead, it’s like getting a peek at the lives of all the women in the backdrop of these stories who are always getting knocked up by the man the heroine believes is her one true love at first. Lana Del Rey is one of those women.

So why am I, self-proclaimed good girl and sensible dater, so seduced by the idea of living a little bit more like Lana Del Rey? Because she feels everything so keenly.

She (I should say, the character she “plays” in her songs) doesn’t live according to a careful formula for avoiding pain, bad experiences, or risk. She doesn’t follow the “rules” for obtaining her own coin-operated boy. Okay, so she pushes her rule-breaking to a fault, but there’s something to be appreciated about being unafraid of being foolish in love.

Ultimately, if you make all the right decisions, you still aren’t guaranteed a tranquil and pain-free existence — the world is too chaotic to allow for that. And while it isn’t a reason to cave into complete hedonism, it is a reason to take a few risks here and there — perhaps even emotional risks. Lana Del Rey’s retro heroine feels so keenly because she’s made herself vulnerable to feeling, and to pain. Vulnerability isn’t a simple concept and it doesn’t mean a person is weak. It means she’s not so afraid of life that she hides all her best parts behind a bristly husk. There are different kinds of vulnerability as well, and many that actually take great courage — especially certain shades of vulnerability in love. It’s possible compulsive rule-followers like me have followed our patterns more out fear than wisdom. And that’s why a good girl like me likes Lana Del Rey. A craving to be a little less wise and a little more vulnerable. A craving to be less numb. And a craving for the kind of music that is unapologetically feminine.

Hannah Sternberg is a writer and cocktail conquistador operating out of Washington, DC. Her second novel, Bulfinch, is now available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats. Relieve your itchy fingers and click here to buy it now.

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1.
Sharon Ferguson

WOW – thanks for the intro – she has an INCREDIBLE voice! I think I’m a new fan…and there aren’t too many female singers that I DO like. I love her retro style. And of COURSE they hate her! It isnt the same mind-numbing atavistic *thump-thump* the others keep perpetrating. They hate her because they do not have the creativity to come up with something different.

Sorry to disappoint you but she started out as an internet darling. It wasn’t until she performed live exceedingly badly that her hipster internet supporters turned on her with the realization that she is a studio and marketing creation. Everything about her starting with her name Lana Del Ray is an image created by her marketing team, her real name is Lizzy Grant. If what you want in a musician is a beautiful voice, song writing ability, someone who plays their own instrument, and does not need studio tricks and a team of marketing experts to do it then check out Laura Marling and find out what real talent is.

I completely and totally agree with you regarding Laura Marling. The first time I heard her voice, I was haunted and hooked. Her voice is a true original and her fidelity to songcraft and introspection is world class.

That being said, I dig Lizzy Grant AKA Ms. Del Rey. Her voice, her pout, her videos all keep my attention, carefully crafted or not. I’ve seen video of her botched live performance, and yes, it is dismal. But was it worse than Beyonce’s lipsynched performance at BHO’s 2nd coming celebration? To that point, I saw New Order live in Park City in 1987 and they were awful. Perhaps the worst live concert I’ve ever attended. However, I still dig their music to this day. My mentioning this is because Miss Grant still has a lot to learn about performing; she’s very young and inexperienced in the music industry. But that doesn’t void her talents and uniqueness. She is not Milli Vanilli.

You make a valid point about her albums and videos. Unfortunately more and more “artists” go into the studio and use auto tune, over dubs and a host of other tricks that could make all but the worst singers sound good or great, then they lip sync it for the video, no problem until they try to preform live. Which is probably why so many concerts anymore are nothing more than choreographed extravaganzas ala Britney Spears or Lady Gaga perhaps Beyonce as well. As to being very young and inexperienced in the music industry I present as my rebuttal Marling at 17 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR_lzh6gvT4 on Jools Holland. Oh and the worst show I ever saw live was Robin Trower just god awful boring.

“there’s something to be appreciated about being unafraid of being foolish in love…. Ultimately, if you make all the right decisions, you still aren’t guaranteed a tranquil and pain-free existence — the world is too chaotic to allow for that. And while it isn’t a reason to cave into complete hedonism, it is a reason to take a few risks here and there…”

Well said. And there are some men, like me, who have been “foolish in love,” yet who don’t regret it in the long run. The pain of lost love is real and sometimes almost unbearable, yet Tennyson was right about having “loved and lost,” and Simon & Garfunkel knew what they were singing about in “Like a Rock.”

Thank you Miss Sternberg for telling us about Lana del Rey. I had heard the name, but since I avoid most of today’s pop music like the plague, I wasn’t familiar with her. I’ve enjoyed the samples you provided. Its nice to know that there is still sometimes music written for adults.

“When he shows up on your doorstep, do you feel a jolt of pleasure, or is it like he’s been there all along and it’s just a bit more difficult to run down and unlock the door instead of simply sliding a button on your phone?”

Never heard of her, but kind of liked the first song. But her image, her face, disturbed me. Has she had massive Botox treatments? Her upper lip looks deformed. I hope she didn’t do this to herself to get her guy to stop playing video games.

Perhaps her love life wouldn’t be so “tragic” if she weren’t attracted to tattooed douchebags. The obvious pleasure humans take–particularly female humans it seems–in their own self-destruction for the sake of “love” is quite worrisome.

Why are we so willing to destroy everything else in order to obtain fleeting moments of a “feeling” which usually brings only more pain and chaos? Both for oneself and for anyone else unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius. There is absolutely nothing “romantic” about any of this. (Though that doesn’t mean these aren’t some well-done and catchy tunes, which only spread the disease all the easier).

This is what happens when humans are left to their own devices untethered from the constraining wisdom of the past. Or pretty much living without any constraints on our behavior at all. She could probably use a good chaperone.

Well said, but a cursory look at the Wiki and you’ll find that this young lady was born with the proverbial silver spoon, and was sent to a private boarding school at age 14 to deal with her alcohol dependency. Yeah, she’s a real role model for young women to follow.

To a troubled mind the allure of meaning to be found in alcohol, drugs, and high-drama “love” affairs is too enticing to pass up. It could almost be said to be a search for *transcendence*. The problem is that it is a transcendence in the wrong direction. The transcendence of a banal existence in the infra-human direction of chaos and death. I think this is what Freud referred to as the “death instinct”.

Yea, I recognize her and her type.
They were the ones back in high school that had the perfect hair and face and were cheerleaders and let the quarterback bang her in the back of his new car. They had nothing but a sneer for the rest of us.

When I went back some 25 years later they are the loud, drunk by 6 ones in the bar at the high school reunion hitting on anything. The operations and dim lights could not hide the ravaged face, the colored hair, the push up bra lines.

The quarterback was the guy in the corner with the pot belly and bad knees looking for someone he could relive his glory days with.

romantic schmantic, I know of a lot of guys who could romance a girl, they are the ones on their third divorce.

I don’t demand perfection from musicians and artists, but I do want some truth and skill, and I think Hannah Sternberg points out some things that are worthwhile about Lana Del Rey’s songs–at least the ones sampled here.

Sorry, I should have written “I was going to say the same as you, Paul A’Barge.”

And for PaulS: in my 50 years of life, I’ve been to a few high school reunions, and I’ve found that some of the kids who were the biggest jerks back in school have matured and grown into good people. Not all, of course, but enough have to show that “the jock,” “the cheerleader,” “the slut” and “the dork” should not necessarily be categorized in those ways their entire life.

I was entranced with Lana Del Rey’s work from the first time I heard her voice. I have listened to it so much I can spot the under-tone music from “Blue Jean” in a recent car commercial.

Finding out that hipsters hate her only deepens my appreciation for what she does. Maybe I should put a serious sound system in my vehicle then blast her at high volume to drive them away from coffee shops.

All things are relative. Del Rey’s not singing about how she kissed a girl or genderbending nor is she verging in Rihanna/Beyonce territory about the wonders of dry humping each other.

In that sense, and the arrangements, it is at least giving a nod to trying to be better and less conformist and pandering music. I mean, Del Rey has nothing to lose – yet.

I recently listened to an hour of Brazilian acts singing at various Rock In Rio concerts and then Rihanna came on the same venue and it felt like a hold up. Gone were the heartfelt original arrangements and in was the faddist conformism. American pop music is in the doldrums while ironically as popular as ever world wide.

Del Rey’s light years beneath Amy Winehouse but less of a stereotype factory than the usual Top 40. I even prefer Del Rey to that odious male version of Michael Bolton elevator music, Adele.

Isn’t it funny how non-conformist artists and performers today are those who appreciate traditional things, or at least don’t belittle them in their work? For those of you who don’t pay much attention to today’s pop culture, the “dry humping” that Fail Burton mentions is pretty prevalent and accepted today.

A truly “transgressive” artist today is a painter such as Jon McNaughton…. http://www.jonmcnaughton.com/ Whether you like his art or not, you have to admit that he goes against the grain of today’s “arts world.”

McNaughton is no Durer or Rembrandt, but my main point is that he’s more skilled than the pseudo-artists who are acclaimed in the “arts world,” and with his subject matter he’s more daring than the so-called “transgressive” individuals who produce material like “Pi** Christ” for their own echo chamber.

Any traditional painter is persona non grata in the fine arts and has been for a half century. In fact pretty much anything before the mid-60s is considered quaint, if not racist, as if the entirety of civilization is an antique of shoddy design.

Some of that is being young and full of beans and thinking your generation knows it all – normal. But when a single generation’s rebelliousness becomes institutionalized and frozen in time for 50 years, that’s kind of wacky. Conformity can’t help but result, ironically from a culture devoted to proving how non-conformist they are.

Again, I don’t see Monty Python as undercutting Western civilization except inasmuch as any satire will undercut anything it targets and Monty Python painted pretty broad strokes. Who, for example, were they going after in Holy Grail? They were just being goofy and having fun and they were brilliant.

I guess they made Vikings and Spam look pretty stupid. They have both in Minnesota. Perhaps the state should look into a libel suit.

Read the lyrics of Poster of a Girl & one thing led to another. Curious, Metric stuff is on You Tube & listened to it alot there but still bought the CDs- any reaction to listening to You Tube and buying the songs.

This article got me thinking about the role of popular culture under capitalism. The corporate-created pop stars sing about things like lives destroyed by failed love–and love implies a choice was made to fall in love. This is a subtle version of the most pernicious lie the corporate plutocracy has foisted on the people–the lie that they are at fault when they have no job, no food, no home or health care.

If a woman thinks has married the “wrong man” because he has no job and can not feed the family,should she be blamed for this or the pitiless corparchy in which we live that discards like trash all people who are not profitable to feed? Who is to blame if unplanned children have no health care? Who is to blame for the unplanned children when birth control is denied in such a brutal fashion that it would make the Mullahs of Iran blush–the testimony of Sandra Fluke was a small bit of truth about the compassionless hell-hole that is the corporation known as the United states of America.

Wow, that’s a lot deeper than I usually take my analysis of my music. But there’s something to it. I grew up on country music, and after Afghanistan I got heavily into classic rock. Newer country artists largely don’t do much for me, although there’s more real emotion there than there is in most of the pop I have accidental contact with. Nowadays it’s often rock that gets my blood moving, and classic country when I’m working on the car. There’s just something about Alabama singing about being with a woman that connects. The cell phone can often be useful, but if I’m with my wife, I want to be with my wife, whether that’s just talking to her while I twist wrenches, or while she knits, or doing something for her like putting a new roof on the house or washing the dishes at night. You don’t get that from plastic, artificial, written-per-formula-and-focus-group pop these days.

Never heard of Lana Del Rey before, but played “Video Games” as I read. I’ll look for more on You-Tube, and try the other videos here. I’m a Lou Reed and Velvets fan from way back. I like irony, and a lack of it. But based on casual readings at You-Tube, Justin Bieber is the number one most maligned, and hated singer in the youth market. I’ve never seen anything like it. The guys just can’t get enough of him! Play Zeppelin, they sound off about Bieber. Meatalica; Bieber! Skynyrd; Bieber! Leonard Cohen; Bieber! If Donny Osmond were just starting out today, they would still hate Bieber. I think they have a crush on him. By the way, I never said at the time, but I really, really liked “Down By The Lazy River,” by the Osmond Brothers, because it was the closest they ever came to hard rock. Not to mention “I can Feel Your Heartbeat” by the Partridge Family. Almost hard rock, man. Try them! But please, don’t tell the guys; they’ll pound me. As far as Lana goes, like I said, I’ll listen some more. I just hope she doesn’t started dating Bieber. The guys would be crushed.